Hanging Glass Speakers Look Super Cool

First off, we know the question you’re already asking — how do they sound? Well, to be honest, not that bad! You could describe it as being glassy (ha ha), but you would be surprised how nice the bass comes through. The speakers suffer when it comes to treble though as it comes out a bit muffled. This could be corrected with a few strategically placed hidden tweeters though!

So how do they work? Well, like any speaker, the sound comes from vibration — in this case, the glass is vibrated to produce the sound. To achieve this, [Evan] is using a pair of HiWave HIAX32C20-8 tactile transducers, which are actually designed to turn most surfaces into speakers. The tricky part of this build is how to hang them.

Having limited space in his room, [Evan] opted to hang the speakers from the ceiling with wire — the only problem is drilling glass isn’t that easy. He shares a few tips, and eventually succeeded using a Dremel tool. From there it was just a matter of installing some hooks in the ceiling, and stringing it all together.

Check out the following video to hear them in action!

We’re curious about other methods that could be used to support these speakers — if you have any ideas, or experience in it, let us know!

There is a mess of them. An interesting experiment to do with these ( strings in four corners ) would be to suspend one horizontally and sprinkle sand or powder on to it while being sweeped in frequency.

Glass has elastic properties that are fairly similar to cast iron. It has a fairly linear load-deformation curve at low loads and it curves gently at high loads up to a brittle breaking point. I suppose there may be some modern exotic glasses that are different, but that’s a starting point for consideration. I would expect the glass plate to reveal the same kinds of behaviour as most metal plates. Differences in the thickness of the glass compared to steel would skew the response to vibration to higher frequencies, but the general behaviour would be similar.

Easiest method would be to connect a Hi-Z microphone (one that has a 1/4in plug) to a digital tuner that covers a wide spectrum (such as a piano tuner), then ping the glass with a cloth covered rubber mallet. The tuner should return the frequency at which the glass is vibrating. Wiring a microphone to a bench frequency counter or oscilloscope set to capture inside the audio range (20Hz – 20kHz) should work as well.

I have a pair of the transducers and would not recommend glass. Glass is a horrible material to make a speaker with. You know the ring glass makes hen you ding it? That’s resonance. Think about hearing that constantly modulated with other sounds and you get these speakers. Although less aesthetically pleasing I found that mdf and pine give a much more normal sound. I have also tried them on a large wall and the sound was enormous but the adhesive doesn’t like the paint. Also I had that same amp for the transducers, it blew after 6 months. Picked up an Onkyo with a bad HDMI board for free. No problems.

“First off, we know the question you’re already asking — how do they sound? Well, to be honest, not that bad! ”

No, they sound absolutely horrible – but they look cool. Anyone who has a pair of decent speakers (not the supermarket crap) and an amplifier will say the same. Yes they sound decent’ish, if compared to poor PC speakers :)